How A Homeless Man (With No Computer) Beat 3 Million Players To Win ESPN's Fantasy Football Championship

The Salem News has the incredible story of Nathan Harrington, the man who beat three million other players to claim ESPN’s overall fantasy football championship, despite not having a place to live or a computer to follow his team on.In October, Harrington, his fiancee, and their 3-year-old son were forced to move out of their apartment building, because it was so infested with rats. Even worse, Harrington had been out of work for a year, because of a car accident that left him with nerve damage.

However, Harrington discovered that four weeks into the NFL season he was in the overall Top 50 of ESPN’s season-long Fantasy Football Challenge. Unfortunately, he’d just put his computer in storage after the move.

So as the family lived out of a motel, Harrington begged friends, neighbours, and total strangers to let them use their computers. He used machines at the local library and even the nursing home where his father lives. He threw everything he had into the game, because “My fantasy football was the one thing that kind of seemed to be going right at the time.”

Despite having drafted Tony Romo (who dislocated his shoulder in Week 7), Harrington threw together a hodgepodge of starting quarterbacks who all paid off at various times. In Week 17, he went with Denver rookie Tim Tebow, who scored three touchdowns and gave Harrington a 0.8-point overall victory — a difference of less than single yard of rushing.

And after all that, what did Harrington get for his troubles? A $3,500 gift certificate to Best Buy, that he sold to his mother to pay his bills.